Henry David Thoreau
American essayist and poet
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.
—Henry David Thoreau, American essayist and poet, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 1849
Posted on January 16, 2004 at 1:21 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure.
—Henry David Thoreau, American essayist and poet, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 1849
Posted on November 2, 2000 at 2:43 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
A sentence should read as if its author, had he held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end.
—Henry David Thoreau, American essayist and poet, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 1849
Posted on August 28, 2000 at 9:06 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
As for style of writing — if one has anything to say, it drops from him simply and directly, as a stone falls to the ground.
—Henry David Thoreau, American essayist and poet, Letter, 1857
Posted on April 29, 1999 at 9:09 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.
—Henry David Thoreau, American essayist and poet, Walden, 1854
Posted on February 26, 1999 at 10:55 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
You must not blame me if I do talk to the clouds.
—Henry David Thoreau, American essayist and poet, Letter, 1842
Posted on March 2, 1999 at 9:34 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
It takes two to speak the truth — one to speak and another to hear.
—Henry David Thoreau, American essayist and poet, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 1849
Posted on July 24, 2002 at 12:19 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
We seem but to linger in manhood to tell the dreams of our childhood, and they vanish out of memory ere we learn the language.
—Henry David Thoreau, American essayist and poet, Journals
Posted on July 28, 2003 at 8:59 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit it and read it are old women over their tea.
—Henry David Thoreau, American essayist and poet, Walden, 1854
Posted on August 27, 2002 at 4:50 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
When I hear the hypercritical quarreling about grammar and style, the position of the particles, etc., etc., stretching or contracting every speaker to certain rules of theirs . . . I see that they forget that the first requisite and rule is that expression shall be vital and natural, as much as the voice of a brute or an interjection: first of all, mother tongue; and last of all, artificial or father tongue. Essentially your truest poetic sentence is as free and lawless as a lamb's bleat.
—Henry David Thoreau, American essayist and poet, Journals
Posted on August 8, 2001 at 5:12 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
The words which express our faith and piety are not definite; yet they are significant and fragrant like frankincense to superior natures.
—Henry David Thoreau, American essayist and poet, Walden, 1854
Posted on December 7, 2001 at 8:44 AM
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